Foreign children exploited on U.S. soil; Egyptian girl kept as slave for years in California
"Shyima was 10 when the wealthy Egyptian couple brought her from a poor village in northern Egypt to work in their California home, arriving in the U.S. in August 2000.
They brought her back to their spacious five-bedroom, two-story home, decorated in the style of a Tuscan villa with a fountain of two angels spouting water through a conch.
She was told to sleep in the garage. It had no windows and was neither heated nor air-conditioned. Soon after she arrived, the garage's only light bulb went out. The Ibrahims didn't replace it. From then on, Shyima lived in the dark."
RUKMINI CALLIMACHI for the Associated Press.